Visa Revises Debit Card Rules In Wake of DOJ Probe

Law360, New York (July 1, 2008, 12:00 AM EDT) -- In the wake of an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, Visa Inc. has agreed to drop rules that required retailers to treat Visa's debit cards differently when customers authorized purchases with a personal identification number instead of a signature.

Visa's regulations allowed banks to permit certain merchants to skip the step of obtaining a customer's signature to authorize a transaction, particularly for those under $25 or certain types of transactions handled over the Internet. The rules, however, blocked banks from allowing retailers to...